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Here we are, a quarter of the way through Readathon. It was time for me to stand for a while, so I’m listening to The Maze Runner while updating here, then I’ll do some stretching and barre exercises to get the blood flowing.

So, I read The Fault in Our Stars. As expected, it was devastating and beautiful, and John Green has a new fan in me. Next up, I think I’ll go with Anton and Cecil, Cats at Sea – it looks fun, light, and like a simple, swift read, which are all perfect for Readathon (and necessary after the heaviness of TFiOS). I’m pretty certain I can finish that in short order, and then I’ll switch to audio to shower and get ready for my evening out. I really, REALLY wish the concert was any other night, but it’ll be a lot of fun, give my eyes a break, and boost my fundraising total. AND, it’s not like the books are going anywhere! Hope you’re all having a great Saturday, whether you’re reading, cheering, or going about other fun weekend business :)

Oh, and here are my in-home cheerleaders. Their energy is contagious. Which means I’m sleepy just looking at their lazy bones :)

Going into hour 4, I just hit the first bit of BIG SAD in The Fault in our Stars, so figured it was a good time for a quick break to kill the momentum. Wasn’t really thinking about the whole “book about death and dying” thing when I chose it, but, what are ya gonna do? I’m really enjoying the characters (though Hazel kinda bugs me sometimes), and officially fell in love with Gus at this moment:

One of the benefits of the Great Library Update of 2014 is that I’ve discovered a few books that needed to move up the TBR stack just in time for Readathon. Combining that knowledge with past Readathon experience and knowledge of my own reading habits, I came up with this book stack:

Additionally, I have Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus on my Nook (the latter of which I’ve been more anxious to read since discovering Morgenstern’s beautiful, and unavailable, Tarot deck). I’m also listening to The Maze Runner by James Dashner, narrated by Mark Deakins.

So, I have a pretty large selection, a bit of diversity, but mostly books I think I’ll enjoy and find easy to read, because I really want to get through a ton of pages and donate a good sum to The Jimmy Fund for my Mamau.

ETA this year’s intro meme, since I actually scheduled this post for 8am – first time I’ve ever been THAT on the ball for Readathon!

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Portland, Maine2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? That’s really hard to say, but The Fault in our Stars was my most recent acquisition; I’ve been meaning to pick that one up for over a year.3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? Ooh, another tough call! Probably the fresh mozzarella, grape tomatoes, basil, and assorted Italian deli meats I’ll throw together with a little fresh ground pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I recently became the newest Assistant Librarian for LibraryThing for Libraries, and I could not be more thrilled about it. I adore my team, and love being “at work” (which, as often as not, means being at home with my colleagues on Skype and my cats curled up on either side of me and my laptop).5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? I’m reading to raise funds for charity this time around, which is a real motivator! And I’m most looking forward to meeting new people – most of my Tweeps are from Readathon adds :)

Okay, back to reading – remember, every comment here is money toward the grand total, so if you’ve read this far, don’t leave without at least saying HI – help me give my money away for a good cause!

Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon comes around twice a year, in October and April, but something always seems to come up during one or the other to keep me from participating. Last October, Readathon was the weekend before my Mamau passed away, and I spent it watching the Red Sox with her. Wouldn’t change that for anything.

$0.05 per page read: this works out to $20 for a 400 page book, but I have two books in progress and want to build my donation even if I start a book and am not really feeling itafter 20 pages.

$5.00 per hour listened: I have an audiobook in progress, and this will make it easier to continue to participate while cooking/preparing snacks, and getting to and from the Ryan Montbleau concert. Which leads me to…

$5.00 per hour missed: I know I’m going to miss at least 3 hours for the concert, but this covers hours slept, too. Any hour in which I do not read or listen to a book, that’s five bucks. And finally…

$1.00 per comment left on my blog posts during the readathon. Official Readathon Cheerleaders will be assigned to stop by and root for me as a reader, but this is an easy way for family and friends to contribute to the grand total.

On Sunday, whenever I wake up from my epic post-readathon sleep, I will do a roundup and calculate the total, which will be donated to the Jimmy Fund in memory of the Reverend Lucille Richard, my favorite reader and fellow nerd.

Mamau the Nerd

So, happy reading and cheering, those of you participating, and for those of you who aren’t, please stop by and say hi anytime tomorrow; I’ll post links to the blog throughout the day. 24 hours from now, it starts!

Epic failure on the readathon, guys. Huge. I spent half of the day setting timers for Joshua’s activities and the other half… I don’t even know. But, I only made it through about 150 pages of one book, and didn’t even pick the other up. Sigh.

At any rate, I’m getting a TON of reading done on my new job, as all I’m doing is scanning thousands of pages of medical records and then taking five minutes here and there to assign them to patients in the database. Not the most exciting work, but hey, I’m getting paid to read, pretty much – and blog! :)

Speaking of which, I’ve decided to start using my main page of Femme Flavor as a journal type of blog, so I’m not restricting myself to writing just about bookish things using FolioFiles or in snippets on Facebook and Twitter. I’d love if you’d join me there, as well (http://femmeflavor.com) and get caught up on what’s new in my universe. I’d love to hear updates from you, as well, so come on over! New post will be up shortly :)

It seems like readathons are always what bring me back to posting after an absence from the blog, and this time is no different. Stasia, a wonderful member of LibraryThing‘s 75 Books Challenge group, is hosting a readathon running from 10p last night until 10p tonight. As I’m snowed in and have no intention of leaving the house for any reason, it seems like a good day to try to finish the two books I’m currently reading and get going on at least one more. I’ll post responses to the hour 1, hour 12, and hour 24 memes here, as well as write an update post for those of you with whom I’m not connected on Twitter and/or Facebook, as much has changed in my life since Thanksgiving! Happy reading, all; off to work on Jonathan Stroud’s The Ring of Solomon, a fun prequel to the Bartimaeus trilogy. :)

Thanks to Jenn for hosting Thankfully Reading, a readathon designed to get the most bookish goodness out of the post-Thanksgiving weekend.

My Thankfully Reading weekend has had a bit of a twist thrown in, as extenuating circumstances required that I bring my little brother home with me from Thanksgiving dinner, and he’ll be hanging with me until Sunday night. While I could just read and let him play video games and watch TV and movies all weekend (which would make us both happy!), I’m trying to be the responsible kid here. So, it means cooking real meals instead of typical readathon snackish fare, playing some games together, and making at least one extremely badly timed but necessary trip out into the retail world for some musts for the lil man. Once he wakes up, I may try to find some titles in my children’s/YA collection that would appeal to him and see if he’d be interested in doing the readathon with me – maybe let him set up his own blog or Tumblr account for it, make it a bro-sis bonding thing. We shall see how it works out.

So, on to the actual reading bit! I’m nearly through my ARC of Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters, and it’s very difficult to withhold any commentary. The book isn’t scheduled for release until January, however, and I’d rather wait until we’re a bit closer and I can add my teasers to the hype I’m sure this book will get.

Additionally, I’m in the middle of Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet, a book club re-read, and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I don’t know that I’ll return to either of these this weekend, as I prefer dedicated group reading time to consist of new-to-me titles. I think Paul Coelho’s The Alchemist might be next on the list. What are you reading this weekend?

Where are you reading from today? My apartment in San Francisco, which I share with two roommates (who we’ve warned about today!) and my partner, who is doing a movie marathon while I readathon :)

3 facts about me … Hmm… I love glitter, am afraid of balloons, and am terrible at coming up with random facts about myself. *grin*

How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? 21

Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? Not particularly, though I would like to make it the whole 24 hours without sleep this time around; I crashed twice for a total of about 3.5 hours last time.

If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, Any advice for people doing this for the first time? It’s only my second time, but I definitely recommend (a) stepping away from Twitter unless you’re deliberately spending as much time reading the #readathon posts as reading your books, and (b) having a couple of easy reads at the start of the day to give you a feeling of accomplishment right off the bat.

We’re 7 hours from wake-up time. Coffee is ready to brew, Rachel’s movie is in the DVD player, my books are stacked by the computer for now, and I’m about to create a post template for ease of updates. Thanks to my friend Erin for coming through with a second computer monitor so Rachel and I can post, research, and push our marathons simultaneously!

Snack prep was fun; here are a couple of pics of our food lineup for the day!

Chocolate chip cookies, yum!

Fruit salad: you can’t see it all, but we have watermelon, strawberries, pink lady and fiji apples, grapes, blackberries, oranges, and pineapple chunks. Holy moly!

And the majority of the foods we got specifically for the readathon/movie marathon. Snacky stuff, quick and easy meals that Rachel can make without my assistance or coaching (thank you for being the chef for the day, baby!), stuff we enjoy but not too much that’ll cause peaks and crashes.

Now for a quick trip over to the cheerleader pages to see what I need to know for that, and then to bed already – it’s going to be a looooooong 24 hours if I don’t get any sleep!

While I don't anticipate ever NOT having fodder for a blog about books and words, one of my favorite things about blogging is the interaction and the way it informs the direction of my writing.
So what's up? Got a bee in your bonnet about something related to the publishing world? Read a book that made you laugh and cry and dance around your kitchen? Want to play Scrabble? Let me know!
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